F 229 
.H16 
Copy 1 



JAMESTOWN 



1607 




907 



Published by 

The American Scenic and Historic 
Preservation Society /I 
New York: 1902 




Class 
Book. 



JAMESTOWN 



1607 



A SKETCH OF THE 
HISTORY AND PRES- 
ENT CONDITION OF 
THE SITE OF THE 
FIRST PERMANENT 
ENGLISH SETTLE- 
MENT IN AMERICA 

BY 
EDWARD HAGAMAN HALL 



1907 



Published by 

The American Scenic and Historic 

Preservation Society 

New York:: 1902 



THE LIBRARY ©F 
«ON6KESS, 

Twe OOPiEB RELCCIVeS> 

WAR, e ^ 1902 

OefWWHT ENTRY 

% ? % •) 0. 



Cop3n:ight, 1902 
THE AMERICAN SCENIC AND HISTORIC 
PRESERVATION SOCIETY 
New York, N. Y 



^ 



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'.- 




ANCIENT CHURCH TOWER AT JAMESTOWN 

(Date about 1639) 



vl 



Mm 



i 




TOWER AND EARTHWORKa u;v civu, WAK 



"As in the arts and sciences the first invention is of more 
consequence than all the improvements afterward, so in king- 
doms the first foundation or plantation is of more noble dignity 
and merit than all that followeth." — Sir Francis Bacon. 



"Jamestown and Plymouth's hallowed rock 
To me shall ever sacred be; 
I care not who my theme may mock, 

Or sneer at them and me. 
I envy not the brute who here can stand 
Without a thrill for his own native land." 

— James Kirke Paulding. 



Here the old world first met the new. Here the white man 
first met the red for settlement and civilization. Here the 
white man wielded the axe to cut the first tree for the first log 
cabin. Here the first log cabin was built for the first village. 
Here the first village rose to the first State capital. Here was 
the first capital of our empire of States. Here was the very 
foundation of a nation of freemen, which has stretched its mil- 
lions and its dominion across the continent to the shores of 
another ocean. Go to the Pacific now to measure the progres- 
sion and power of a great people." — Gov. Henry A. Wise of 
Virginia. 



^to Jimerican Scenic mxtX ^ist0ric 

President 
Hon. Andrew H. Green . 214 Broadway, New York 

yice-Vresidents 
Hon. Charles S. Francis . . . Troy 

Frederick W. Devoe New York 

J. PiERPONT Morgan .... New York 

Walter S. Logan New York 

Treasurer 
Edward Payson Cone 314 West 90th Street, New York 

Counsel 
CoL. Henry W. Sackett Tribune Building, New York 

Landscape Architect 
Saml. Parsons, Jr. . St. James Building, New York 

Secretary 
Edward Hagaman Hall Tribune Building, New York 



"^XVisizz^ 



Hon. Andrew H. Green 
Hon. Charles S. Francis 
George F. Kunz 
Hon. Henry E, Howland 
Frederick W. Devoe 
Walter S. Logan 
Hon. Thomas V. Welch 
Edward P. Hatch 
Hon. Robert L. Fryer 
Hon. John Hudson Peck 
Hon. Hugh Hastings 
Col. Henry W. Sackett 
Thomas R. Proctor 
William H. Russell 
Charles F. Wingate 
Richard T. Davies 



C=i 



J. PiERPONT Morgan 
Samuel P. Avery 
Hon. Wm. Van Valkenburgh 
Frederick S. Lamb 
Col. Abraham G. Mills 
Edward Payson Cone 
H. K. Bush-Brown 
Edward T. Pottir 
Hon. George W. Perkins 
Frank S. Witherbee 
Hon. Francis G. Landon 
Mrs. M. Fay Peirce 
Francis Whiting Halsey 
Reginald Pelham Bolton 
Albert Ulmann 



Jamestown. 



/^N . MAY 13TH, 1607, the first permanent English, 
^^ settlement within the boundaries of the present 
United States of America was made in longitude 76° 
46' west of Greenwich and latitude 37° 12' north of the 
equator, upon a peninsula adjoining the northern shore 
of a tide-water river called Powhatan, in the Province 
of Virginia, about 50 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. 
The river was thereupon named James River, and the 
settlement Jamestown, in honor of the reigning mon- 
arch of England, James I. 

The soil of Jamestown thus gave root to the first 
successful planting of Anglo-Saxon civilization in the 
New World, and became the garden of our people's in- 
fancy in the Western Hemisphere. 

Since then, great events have rolled over Jamestown's 
historic acres. Across them tramped the armies that 
brought into being our independent Nation, and upon 
them stand the battlemented memorials of the later 
struggle that confirmed the Nation's Unity. The little 
Colony of 1607 has grown into one of the dominant 
powers of the earth; but Jamestown herself is no more. 
She is a vanished city, partly buried in the earth, partly 
submerged in the river ; for that which was once a penin- 
sula is now an Island, completely severed from the 



mainland and steadily disappearing under the ceaseless 
gnawing of the surrounding stream. Upon the ^'shores 
one may gather, like crumbs dropped from the^river's 
greedy maw, pieces of brick from the foundations of the 
houses that sheltered the pioneers, beads with which 
they bartered with the aborigines, and stems and bowls 
of the tobacco pipes with which they consoled their 
hours of suffering. A hundred and fifty feet from the 
encroaching waves a few quaint grave-stones with silent 
eloquence attest the mortality of an heroic generation, 
and a solitary and impressive church tower bespeaks 
the inspiration that sustained it through its sufferings. 
But that is all that is visible of ancient Jamestown — 
all that remains above the soil as a physical reminder 
of that thrilling opening chapter of our national history 
which records the phenomenal faith, daring and endur- 
ance by which a new civilization was planted in this 
western wilderness three centuries ago. 

In 1907, the people of the United States, under the 
leadership of the people of Virginia, will celebrate with 
becoming ceremonies the tercentenary of the settle- 
ment of Jamestown. Moved by the approach of this 
significant anniversary and the threatened obliteration 
of the site of the event which it will commemorate, the 
American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society has 
memorialized Congress to purchase the Island, believing 
that due respect for our national traditions and a justi- 
fiable pride in the annals of our race demand that it 
should be taken into the care of the Federal Govern- 
ment as a National Park, rescued from vandalism and 




RUINS OP AMBLER (JACQUELIN) MANSION 

(Site of Hoiise of Burgesses) 




PROCESS OP EROSION IN ALL STAGES 



tholomew Gosnold and John Rat cliff e. Newport com- 
manded the fleet, which carried 105 men besides the 
crews. There were no women in the company. Among 
the voyagers was a veteran campaigner who was des- 
tined to have a great influence on the future destiny of 
the Colony, Capt. John Smith. While the expedition 
dawdled along through the West Indies, dissensions 
arose, and when it arrived off the Virginia capes, April 
26th, 1607, Smith was in irons. 

A landing was made on a sandy point which they 
named Cape Henry, after the Prince of Wales, and upon 
which they erected a cross. A tablet on the Cape Henry 
light-house erected by the Association for the Preser- 
vation of Virginia Antiquities commemorates that fact. 
Upon opening their sealed instructions, the voyagers 
found that Newport, Gosnold, Ratcliffe, Smith, Edward 
Wingfield, John Martin and George Kendall had been 
appointed members of the first Council for the govern- 
ment of the Colony. Wingfield became the first Presi- 
dent of the Council. 

Seventeen days were spent in exploring the surround- 
ing waters in accordance with the written instructions 
of the Company to seek a river which promised to give 
passage to the South Sea. As they touched the cape 
at the entrance to Hampton Roads, they found the 
place so comfortable after their trials at sea that they 
namied it Point Comfort ; and it is very generally believed 
that Newport News honors the name of the commander 
of the fleet, whose subsequent trips back and forth be- 
tween Virginia and England for supplies of food and 



colonists contributed so materially to the perpetuation 
of the settlement of Jamestown.* 

About 30 miles up-stream beyond Point Comfort, on 
the northern shore of the River James, on the concave 
side of a great bend, the explorers came to a peninsula 
about three miles long and i^ wide at its widest part. 
It lay in a generally northwesterly and southeasterly 
direction, and at its northwestern end was connected 
by a narrow isthmus with the mainland. The James 
River is here from li to 3 J miles wide. The widest 
measurement is S S E . from Lower Point ; the narrowest 
is almost due west from Church Point to Swan's Point 
on the opposite shore. As might be expected, the great- 
est depth of water is in the narrow channel, where the 
present maximum depth is 81 feet; while in the widest 
channel the maximum is at present only 2 1 feet, rapidly 
shallowing as one goes down stream to only 18 or 19 
feet. 

In 1607 the voyagers found deep water close to the 
western shore of the peninsula, which enabled them to 
moor their vessels directly to the trees, and this fact 
appears to have been the factor which determined them 
to land there, in spite of their written directions not to 
"plant in a low, moist place," for the peninsula was a 



*John Fiske inclines toward the belief that this is the origin 
of Newport News, and says that the spelling "Newport Ness" 
which appears on some old maps is the equivalent of "Newport 
Point." President Lyon G. Tyler of WilHam and Mary Col- 
lege, however, traces the name to Port Newce, Ireland, whence 
Daniel Gookin transported some cattle and emigrants to Vir- 
ginia in 1620, naming his Virginia landing-place New Port 
Newce. 

10 



low alluvial deposit, penetrated by marshes here and 
there. The subject was discussed with considerable 
zeal at the time, and the decision to land there was by 
no means unanimous. On May 13th, however, the die 
was cast, and the colonists landed on the western end 
of the peninsula, where it was highest, and on the fol- 
lowing day began to build a triangular fort called Fort 
James. Subsequently the place was named Jamestown. 

This, then, was the beginning of English-speaking 
America. 

Contemporary with it was the first regular establish- 
ment of the Protestant religion in America, under the 
auspices of the Church of England and the ministra- 
tions of the Rev. Robert Hunt. The first church was 
a sail-cloth suspended from trees, and the pulpit a board 
fastened between two of them. 

The little colony that landed here amid the blossoms 
of spring appears to have fared as badly as that which 
landed at Plymouth Rock 13 years later amid the rigors 
of a New England winter. Their first summer was a 
hard one. Lack of harmony among themselves and an 
aversion from work were two causes contributing to 
their misfortunes. Death, in the form of fevers, star- 
vation and the Indians, reaped large harvests, and by 
September one-half were dead. By that time, also. 
President Wingfield had been deposed. Councilor Gos- 
nold had died, and Councilor Kendall had been shot 
for alleged mutiny. 

Had not the colony's numbers and stores been replen- 
ished from time to time, it would quickly have disap- 



II 



peared, like the lost colony planted by Raleigh on Roan- 
oke Island 20 years before. Newport remained only 
long enough to explore the James with Smith as far as 
the falls at the present site of Richmond, and to see 
Smith admitted to the Council, when, on June 226., he 
sailed for England. By January 8th, 1608, he was back 
with the First Supply, so-called, not only bringing pro- 
visions, but adding 120 persons to the 38 survivors then 
remaining, making the population 158. On April loth 
he was off again for England and back once more in 
October with the Second Supply. This added 70 per- 
sons to the population, which had fallen off to 130, 
making a total of 200. And in August, 1609, the Third 
Supply arrived, adding 300 to the population. 

Next to Newport's Supplies, the perpetuation of the 
colony appears to have been due to Smith's activities 
in exploring the surrounding country and getting corn 
from the natives. Smith's expeditions, however, were 
far from being pleasure trips, and were diversified by 
some notable experiences. On December loth, 1607, he 
started to explore the Chickahominy River, with two 
white companions L The two companions were soon 
killed by the Indians, and Smith saved himself from 
his assailants' arrows by tying his Indian guide in front 
of him with his garter, for a shield, while he manipu- 
lated his gun with his free hands. When, at length, he 
was captured, he saved himself from immediate death 
by mystifying his captors with the quivering needle of 
his pocket compass. Taken, finally, to Powhatan, at 
Weromocomoco, on the northern shore of the York River, 



12 



about 1 5 miles northeast of Jamestown, January 5 th, 1 608 , 
he was condemned to death, and was about to be exe- 
cuted, when Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, besought 
his life, and he was spared once more. Conducted back 
to Jamestown, January 8th, by Powhatan's representa- 
tives, instead of finding the colony a haven of safety, 
he was confronted with the extraordinary charge of 
murder under the Levitical Law in having been respon- 
sible for the death of his two white companions, and 
was sentenced to death by his enemies in the Council. 
The timely arrival of Newport with the First Supply, 
on the same day, saved him once more, and preserved 
to the colony the services of one of the most practical, 
energetic and helpful men it ever had. In the summer 
of 1608 Smith made two voyages up the Chesapeake 
Bay, and sent to England his famous and wonderfully 
accurate map of Virginia, which alone is a monument 
to his energy and powers of accurate observation. His 
later services, in collecting corn from the Indians for 
the sustenance of the starving colony, were of vital con- 
sequence in maintaining unbroken the thread of James- 
town's existence. 

Among those who came over in the Second Supply 
was Ann Burras, who, in December, 1608, was married 
in the Jamestown Church to John Laydon. This is the 
first recorded English wedding on American soil. In Sep- 
tember, 1609, while coming down the James in a boat, 
Smith was badly wounded by an explosion of gunpow- 
der, and had to sail for England in October for 
surgical aid. Had he been in Jamestown the following 

13 



winter of 1609-10, he might have mitigated the suffer- 
ings of that horrible period known to history as the 
Starving Time. As it was, when the colonists had 
eaten all their corn, they could get no more. For a 
while they subsisted on roots and herbs, eked out, pos- 
sibly, with a few shell- and other fish. Then hunger 
converted some of them into cannibals. A slain Indian 
was boiled and eaten. One man, bereft of reason, killed 
his wife, salted her corpse, and had eaten a part of it 
before he was discovered. Whereupon his comrades, 
who appear still to have retained some of their natural 
instincts of horror, took the uxoricide and burned him 
at the stake. When, on May loth, 1610, the pinnaces 
Patience and Deliverance, with names of strange sig- 
nificance, arrived with a belated part of the Third Sup- 
ply, they found only 60 feeble and half crazed surviv- 
ors at Jamestown. 

The thread of the colony's existence had now become 
so tenuous that it had nearly reached the breaking 
point, and had not a most fortunate event occurred, 
the continuity of the colony's life would have been 
interrupted, and the first permanent English settlement 
must have been recorded later and probably elsewhere. 
On Thursday, June 7th, 1610, the colonists gave way 
to despair, took their supplies aboard ship, buried their 
cannon within the fort, and started down the river, en 
route for England. That night they halted at Mulberry 
Island. The next day they were met in Hampton Roads 
by three ships of Lord Delaware. Whereupon, they 
put back to Jamestown, and on Sunday, the loth, were 

14 



on the Peninsula again. Lord Delaware, as he stepped 
ashore, fell on his knees and gave thanks; and well he 
might, for Virginia was saved. 

The winter of 1610-11 was another hard one, but noth- 
ing ever equaled the awful Starving Time. Gradually 
things improved. Order was evolved out of chaos. 
Shiftlessness was ended by some vigorous and judicious 
Governors. The people began to prosper and the col- 
ony to develop offshoots in the shape of neighboring 
settlements. The Indians were gradually crowded back, 
but not without terrible and desperate efforts on their 
part to hold their ground against the pathfinders and 
plowmen of the new civilization. The attack on James- 
town in the year of settlement and the slaughter of 
Ratcliffe and 30 men in 16 10 were insignificant com- 
pared with later massacres. 

Powhatan, the great Indian chief, was not altogether 
unfriendly toward the whites, as was evidenced by his 
consent to the marriage of his daughter Pocahontas to 
John Rolfe. The wedding, which took place after she 
had been baptized into the Christian faith, was cele- 
brated in the midst of a picturesque gathering of red 
and white men, in the Jamestown church, about April 
5 th, 1 614. This was the first conversion to Christianity 
and baptism of an Indian within the limits of the original 
English colonies. It was also, it is believed, the first 
recorded lawful marriage between white man and Indian 
in the limits of the present United States. 

In 161 5, fixed individual property rights in the soil 
were first established by the London Company grant- 

15 



• • „» a- ♦'; 







• Tr: tjTtni p aiajx i i 



M Mtlcnieiia a^^ 




REFERENCES. 

Site of Class House by ancient road to Williams- 
burgh. 

Piles of Durfey*s Bridge, site of obliterated 
Istnmus. 

New bridge across Back River. 
5. Government shield or breakwater. 

Site of ancient powder magazine. 

Line of water O feet deep- 
Tree 30O feet from shore, showing erosion during 

fifty years. 
.9-10. Enclosure of A. P. V. A. 

Redoubt erected during Civil War. 

Line of water 12 feat deep. Probably approxi- 
mating shore line of I607. 

Church tower and grave-yard. 

Redoubt erected during Civil War. 

Ancient foundation struck in digging post-hole. 

Ancient foundation uncovered. Thought to be 
site of Clerk's office. 

Ruins of Ambler Mansion Site of House of 
Burgesses 

Line of water 13 feet deep. 

Redoubt erected during Civil War. 
. Travis grave-yard. 

33. 4-1. 50, 54. 81. Depth of water. 



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^ 




ing 50 acres of land to every freeman in absolute 
right. 

For eight years after the marriage of Rolfe and 
Pocahontas comparative peace reigned between the 
natives and the new comers. Rolfe and his dusky 
bride lived happily about 50 miles above James- 
town on the James River at Varina until 1616, 
when he took his wife to England. There she was 
received and treated as a princess, creating a very 
favorable impression. As the couple were about to em- 
bark for Virginia again, Pocahontas suddenly died, and 
was buried in the church-yard at Gravesend, Eng., 
March 21st, 161 7. In the following year, her venerable 
father, the powerful Powhatan, followed her to the 
grave. 

Either as a coincidence with or as a consequence of 
the death of these two, relations with the Indians then 
became strained, and in 1622 the slumbering hatred of 
the red men for the white broke forth like a volcano in 
a terrible massacre, in which 347 settlers outside of 
Jamestown perished. Twenty-two years later occurred 
another slaughter, in which about 300 perished, but in 
this case, as in the massacre of 1622, Jamestown was 
warned in time and escaped unharmed. 

Something of the sacrifice involved in the founding 
of Jamestown is indicated by the fact that out of 14,000 
emigrants sent over from 1607 to 1622, only 911 were 
alive at the end of the massacre of the latter year. 
Despite these terrible drawbacks, the colony was mak- 
ing progress. In 161 9 the London Company had elected 

18 



as Treasurer Sir Edwin Sandys, a progressive man and 
opponent of the King. He believed that the colony 
could succeed only through home rule. Consequently 
Governor Yeardley was instructed to issue writs 
for the election of a General Assembly of Virginia; 
and on July 30th, 1619, more than a year before 
the landing at Plymouth Rock, the first representative 
legislature in America assembled in the Jamestown 
Church. The legislature was called the House of Bur- 
gesses. 

The same year, 16 19, witnessed two other events — 
one of picturesque interest, one of far-reaching impor- 
tance. The first was the arrival at Jamestown of a 
ship-load of respectable maidens, who, with some lati- 
tude of choice, were disposed of to colonists who could 
pay 120 pounds of tobacco apiece for their traveling 
expenses. Upon this incident turns the plot of Mary 
Johnston's novel, "To Have and to Hold."* The sec- 
ond incident was the arrival of a Dutch man-of-war, 
from which were purchased 20 negro slaves. In strik- 
ing contrast with the establishment of the first free leg- 
islature, occurred that year the introduction of negro 
slavery into Virginia. 

In 1624, the first resistance to taxation without repre- 
sentation was made at Jamestown, when the legislature 
forbade the Governor to lay any taxes that it had not 
authorized. 



*John Fiske gives the date 1619 in his "Old Virginia and 
Her Neighbors." Winsor's Narrative and Critical History 
says 162 1. 

19 



In 1635 occurred the first rebellion in America, when 
John Harvey, the Governor, was arrested for treason 
and sent to England for betraying the interests of Vir- 
ginia in the controversy between her and Maryland. 

In 1676 occurred Bacon's Rebellion, led by Nathaniel 
Bacon, Jr., and caused by Governor Sir Wm. Berkeley's 
refusal to allow the outlying colonists to organize them- 
selves for defense against the Indians. On September 
19 th, 1676, Baconburnedjamestown, in eluding the church 
and House of Burgesses, the total loss being estimated 
at 150,000 pounds of tobacco. 

In March, 1679, the council ordered that "James- 
town be rebuilt and be the Metropolis of Virginia, as 
the most ancient and convenient place." But a book 
full of laws could not overcome the error in the location 
of the first settlement; and while the town was rebuilt 
after the fire of 1676, the "Metropolis" neve r material- 
ized. In its palmiest days, Jamestown probably never 
contained more than three or four score houses and a 
resident population of over 250. In 1609 there was a 
strongly palisaded fort, in and about which were 50 or 
60 fragile cabins, a church, a store house and a maga- 
zine. In 1625 there were 22 dwellings, a church, a 
merchants' store, 3 store-houses, a guard-house, and, 
outside the town, two block-houses — one to guard the 
isthmus, and the other to prevent Indians from swim- 
ming across the Back River, which separated the penin- 
sula from the mainland. The population of the penin- 
sula was then 221. In 1662 an act was passed for 
the erection of 32 brick houses, 40 by 20 inside measure- 



20 



ment, but in 1676 there were only 16 or 18 houses 
besides the church, mostly of brick. At one time the 
town was laid out in two or three streets, with door- 
yards and gardens, and doubtless presented an attrac- 
tive appearance ; but the exact ground plan of the town 
is wrapped in mystery, and can only be discovered by 
systematic excavations, which it is hoped may be made 
if the Government purchases Jamestown Island for a 
National Reservation. In 1722, according to the Rev. 
Hugh Jones, Jamestown was "an abundance of brick 
rubbish with three or four inhabited houses."* The 
present aspect of Jamestown is described further on. 

With the physical decadence of the town came also 
its political decline. In 1698 the State House was 
burned again, and in 1699 the seat of government was 
moved to the Middle Plantations, as Williamsburgh 
was called on account of its location midway between 
the James and York Rivers. Jamestown now lost its 
pre-eminence as the capital, but for three-quarters of a 
century longer maintained a relic of its former individ- 
uality by having a representative in the House of Bur- 
gesses. By the Constitution adopted during the Revo- 
lution it lost even that distinction, and its political and 
material glory may be said then to have departed. 

But its historical importance, on the contrary, was 
destined to receive accessions. Lying at the southern 



* There are evidences on the island which suggest that James- 
town City was more extensive than historical descriptions indi- 
cate, and if the site should ever be excavated systematically, 
it might be necessary to revise accepted statements. 



21 



end of the ancient road which crossed the famous York 
Peninsula, leading to Williamsburgh midway and to 
Yorktown on the York River, Jamestown was a notable 
landmark in the plans of the southern campaigners of 
both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. 

In 1 781 Cornwallis' last fight, before he took his final 
and fatal stand at Yorktown, was at Jamestown Ford. 
Lafayette and Wayne, with about 5,000 men, had closely 
chased Cornwallis down the Peninsula from Richmond, 
when, on July 6th, 1781, the British General laid a trap 
for his pursuers at the Jamestown causeway. Conceal- 
ing the principal part of his army on the mainland, he 
stationed a smaller part on the Jamestown Peninsula 
and conspicuously displayed them as a decoy. The 
Americans were at first deceived into believing that a 
few Redcoats who were exhibited on the mainland 
were the rear guard of Cornwallis' army, and it was not 
until they found themselves fiercely engaged with the 
bulk of the enemy's force that they realized their mis- 
take. The Americans suffered a tactical defeat, but a 
strategic victory, for during that night Cornwallis took 
his whole army over onto the little peninsula, and 
three days later continued his retrograde by crossing the 
James and marching to Portsmouth. The Americans lost 
in this engagement 118 killed, wounded and prisoners, 
and the British 80. Fifteen weeks later Cornwallis 
surrendered and American Independence was won, 
within 19 miles of the spot where English civilization 
was first permanently planted in America by the Mother 
Country. 



L.O^'Cl. 22 



According to Thatcher's Military Journal, only two 
houses were then standing at Jamestown, and these are 
supposed to have been the Jacquelin (Ambler) Mansion, 
on the foundations of the old House of Burgesses, near 
the western end, and the Travis Mansion, near the east- 
ern end. The former had been burned by the British 
in 1776, but rebuilt on the old foundations in 1780. 

In the Civil War, Jamestown, then an island, was 
promptly seized upon as a point of great strategic im- 
portance, and heavy earthworks were erected thereon 
— one commanding the approach from the mainland 
on the north, one on Church Point, and one near the 
east end, the latter two commanding the passage of 
the river. These earthen fortifications still remain, im- 
pressive memorials of the deadly storm that raged over 
the historic Virginia Peninsula and James River in the 
days of '61 and '65. Although there is more than 81 
feet of water off the western end of the island, the river 
sounds less than 20 feet between the eastern end and 
the opposite shore; and it was because the famous Con- 
federate ironclad Merrimac could not cross these flats 
that the men in gray blew her up in 1862, when they 
withdrew to Richmond. 

Jamestown has passed through the hands of many 
owners, most of whom have manifested little regard 
for its sacred associations. In 1892, however, it was 
purchased by the late Edward Everett Barney and his 
wife, Mrs. Louise J. Barney. The latter, now living 
at Meadow ville, Va., with great public spirit cleared 
up the island, took measures to preserve the ruins, 

23 



constructed a substantial road the whole length of the 
island, built a new 250-foot bridge across Back River 
to the mainland, and a 500-foot dock on the James 
River for steamboats, and in 1893 donated 22^ acres at 
the western end to the Association for the Preservation 
of Virginia Antiquities. 

The island is estimated to contain from 1,500 to i ,600 
acres, three-quarters of which is arable. It is indented 
on the north and east by fingers of marsh-land occu- 
pying about a quarter of the area, which can readily 
be reclaimed by modern methods of diking and drain- 
age, such as are employed on neighboring river-lands. 
The soil is fertile, and amply rewards the cultivator of 
an extensive dairy and truck farm. Here and there 
groves of noble pines, intermixed with oaks and other 
deciduous trees, diversify the landscape. There are only 
about twenty buildings on the island now. At the 
western end, within the A. P. V. A. enclosure, is one 
house hidden behind the massive earthen walls of a fort 
of the Civil War. A few feet east of the fort rises the 
venerable brick tower of the ancient church. The tower 
is 18 feet square, 36 feet high, with walls three feet 
thick, and crumbled at the top. It is three stories high. 
The first story is pierced by doorways in the eastern 
and western walls. The second story contains an arched 
window above each doorway, but the masonry is absent 
from the wall space between each window and the door 
below, thus merging each pair of openings in one, about 
12 feet high. The third story is perforated by two 
loop-holes for guns on each of the four sides. The date 

24 



of the erection of the church is uncertain, but it is be- 
lieved to have been begun about 1639. The ground 
adjacent to the tower on the east has been excavated, 
disclosing the foundations of two churches, the smaller 
inside of the larger. The larger measures 56 by 28 feet 
and shows the bases of four buttresses on each side. 
Over these foundations the A. P. V. A. have erected a 
wooden shed. Adjoining to this are the remains of the 
ancient grave-yard, the tomb-stones of which are being 
restored by the same association. 

A quarter of a mile southeast of the tower stand the 
ruins of the Ambler or Jacquelin Mansion, on founda- 
tions originally built in 1640 for the House of Bur- 
gesses. The structure on this site has been destroyed 
by fire several times. As before stated, it was burned 
in 1776 by the British, but rebuilt. It was burned 
again in 1862, but rebuilt. And it was burned once 
more in 1895. Its ragged but massive brick walls still 
attest the dignity of the building. Seven-eighths of a 
mile southeast of these ruins is an earthwork of the 
Civil War, about 300 feet square. At the extreme 
southeastern end of the island is the ancient Travis 
burial ground. 

The population of the island at present consists of a 
farmer's family and a few helpers, perhaps a couple of 
dozen persons in all. 

But while the surface indications of ancient James- 
town are few, the ground is a rich treasury of relics of 
the past, for Jamestown is a veritable buried city, and 
the plow and spade unearth memorials which bring 

25 



before us with startling vividness the generation of 
John Smith and other fathers of the colony. Pieces of 
armor, a halberd, sword hilts, spiked balls ; gold, silver 
and copper coins; a pewter basin and other domestic 
utensils; small white and red clay pipes, in which the 
grateful properties of tobacco were first enjoyed by the 
white men; skeletons and coffin handles; glass bottles 
beautifully iridescent from long burial in the earth; 
glass beads, striped like goose-berries;* fragments of 
stained glass from the old church windows; bits of 
charcoal, recalling Jamestown's fiery trials — these and 
many other mementoes are among the smaller objects 
exhumed. 

In various parts of the island, ancient brick founda- 
tions have been struck and more or less uncovered. 
The very interesting church foundations have already 
been mentioned. About 200 feet southwest of the Am- 
bler ruins, the brick foundations of a house, 20 by 34 
inside measurement, have been uncovered. They are 
thought to be the substructure of the old clerk's office. 
Enough has been revealed in different parts of the island 
to arouse the intensest interest of the historian and 
antiquarian. No street plan of ancient Jamestown is 
known to exist, and students who have tried to con- 



*Doubtless products of the first glass factory in America. In 
October, 1608, the Second Supply brought over eight Dutchmen 
and Poles, "skillful workmen from foreign parts," to teach the 
colonists how to make glass, tar, pitch, and soap ashes. In 
162 1 four Italians were brought over to promote glass-making. 
The glass-house was located on the mainland just across the 
isthmus. See map. 

26 



struct it from property descriptions have been baffled 
by their indefiniteness. It is believed that systematic 
and scientific excavations would reveal the original 
ground plan of Jamestown, and throw a flood of light 
on many obscure details of its history L 

From the latter statement, however, must be excepted 
that portion already obliterated by the river. This 
erosion of the island is the most lamentable chapter 
of the story. It has been going on apparently at the 
rate of about six feet a year. The outline of the west- 
ern end of the peninsula at the time of settlement was 
probably not far from the line on the accompanying 
map indicating the limit of the 12 -foot soundings of the 
river. This varies from ^ to | of a mile from the present 
shore. As stated at the beginning of this brochure, 
Jamestown Island, which is an alluvial deposit, was a 
peninsula in 1607. At the extreme northwestern end 
it was connected with the mainland immediately west 
of the mouth of Powhatan Creek by an isthmus from 
50 to 100 feet wide. Powhatan Creek then emptied 
into Back River, which was, in reality, the continua- 
tion of the Creek to the James. The isthmus and west- 
ern end of the island, ceaselessly pounded by the gigan- 
tic water-hammer of the James, which strikes it with 
the undiminished momentum of a direct current for 
seven miles, has nothing in its composition to withstand 
this onslaught. Consequently, the isthmus was washed 
away, and the James had a free course north as well as 
south of the island. In 178 1, according to Tarleton's 
" Campaigns," the island was " separated from the main- 

27 



land by a small gut of water, not two feet wide at the 
reflex of the tide." In the time of the Revolution, 
the submerged neck of land* was called Jamestown 
Ford. In 1836-37, Col. Goodrich Durfey built a bridge 
over the ford; but just prior to Lossing's visit in 1848 
a tremendous storm swept it away. The piles of the 
bridge are still visible, as indicated on the accompany- 
ing map. To-day, it would take a bridge a quarter of 
a mile long to cross the expanse of water at the same 
point. Instead of this, Mrs. Barney has erected a 
bridge about | of a mile east of the site of the Durfey 
bridge, crossing the Back River where it is but 250 feet 
wide. 

The loss of the isthmus would be of little account if, 
under the same influences, the island itself had not been 
wasting away. All that portion of the island lying west 
of a line drawn due south from the mouth of Powhatan 
Creek has been eroded, and the Creek now empties 
directly into the James. In 1805, the erosion had 
advanced so far that the stumps of the palisades erected 
by the first settlers for their protection against the 
Indians could be seen at low tide, 150 or 200 paces 
from the shore. Since 1846, the shore for a distance 
of 300 feet inland has been washed away, as is proven 
by an old cypress tree, now 300 feet out in the river, 
which in 1846 was on the shore almost beyond the 

* Readers of Jamestown history should be careful to discrimi- 
nate between the expression "neck of land" as applied to the 
isthmus connecting Jamestown Peninsula with the mainland, 
and the proper name Neck of Land, applied to that portion of 
the mainland lying between Powhatan Creek and Mill Creek. 

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014 441 274 6 

reach of high tide. In that year, when the high tides 
were just beginning to lap the ground around the old 
cypress, there stood, southeast of it and 300 feet still 
further inland, a picturesque old brick powder maga- 
zine, which is said to have been built by Capt. John 
Smith, and the walls of which bore the marks of many 
a conflict. In 1890, the river had eaten its way up to 
this magazine, thus verifying the rate of progress indi- 
cated by the immersion of the cypress tree. The maga- 
zine walls crumbled away, leaving the foundation visi- 
ble for awhile a few feet from shore, but now it is 
completely obliterated. 

As the river's inroads progress, brick foundations of 
dwellings and other relics are exposed and carried away. 
The farmer's children walk along the shore and pick up 
beads, pipe stems, and other mementoes of the distant 
past, and use them for playthings. 

In 1895, Congress appropriated $10,000 for the pro- 
tection of the island, and the money was spent in laying 
a number of large flat stones along the sands of the 
western shore; but the river, after licking the stones 
awhile, like some monster preparing its food for diges- 
tion, simply swallowed up the stones and most of them 
disappeared. Then Congress appropriated $15,000, 
which was more wisely expended in a scientifically con- 
structed shield or breakwater of masonry, 1299 feet long, 
as shown on the accompanying map. But this protec- 
tion, excellent in quality, is too small in quantity, and 
if the Government does not take the island and, by 
liberal treatment, preserve it as one of the most precious 

29 



heirlooms of the Nation, the graves surrounding the 
venerable church tower will soon yield up their dead 
to the greedy waves, and the great tower itself, the 
silent witness of nearly three centuries of our national 
growth, will bend its lofty head to the conquering river. 
As the fate of ancient Troy was summed up in the 
two words, "Troja fuit," so we may say of Jamestown 
the city, "Jamestown was." But historic Jamestown is, 
and lives mightily to-day in the hearts of the American 
people, in the institutions of their government, in the 
civilization of a hemisphere. Jamestown City lies bur- 
ied in Jamestown Island. Let a grateful and reverent 
Nation, through its Congress, say to the surrounding 
river, "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther;" and 
let it preserve forever, as a sacred place, the islet that 
was consecrated by the sacrifices and sufferings of a 
generation of heroes, and that entombs the bones and 
sacred memorials of the pathfinders of Anglo-Saxon 
America. 



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